TY - JOUR
T1 - Electrical resistance of stainless steel/polyester blended knitted fabrics for application to measure sweat quantity
AU - Chen, Qing
AU - Shu, Lin
AU - Zheng, Rong
AU - Fu, Bailu
AU - Fan, Jintu
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding: This work is supported by Arts & humanities Research Council of UK (AH/T011483/1), Shanghai style fashion design and value creation knowledge service center (ZX201311000031), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2232020 D-45, 223200 E-06).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/4/1
Y1 - 2021/4/1
N2 - Skin wetness and body water loss are important indexes to reflect the heat strain of the human body. According to ISO 7933 2004, the skin wetness and sweat rate are calculated by the evaporative heat flow and the maximum evaporative heat flow in the skin surface, etc. This work proposes the soft textile-based sensor, which was knitted by stainless steel/polyester blended yarn on the flat knitting machine. It investigated the relationship between electrical resistance in the weft/warp directions and different water absorption ratio (0–70%), different sample size (2 cm × 2 cm, 2 cm × 4 cm, 2 cm × 6 cm and 2 cm × 8 cm). The hydrophilic treatment effectively improved the water absorption ratio increasing from 40% to 70%. The weft and warp direction exhibited different electrical behaviors when under dry and wet conditions. It suggested the weft direction of knitted fabrics was recommended for detecting the electrical resistance due to its stable sensitivity and lin-earity performance. It could be used as a flexible sensor integrated into a garment for measuring the skin wetness and sweat rate in the future instead of traditional measurements.
AB - Skin wetness and body water loss are important indexes to reflect the heat strain of the human body. According to ISO 7933 2004, the skin wetness and sweat rate are calculated by the evaporative heat flow and the maximum evaporative heat flow in the skin surface, etc. This work proposes the soft textile-based sensor, which was knitted by stainless steel/polyester blended yarn on the flat knitting machine. It investigated the relationship between electrical resistance in the weft/warp directions and different water absorption ratio (0–70%), different sample size (2 cm × 2 cm, 2 cm × 4 cm, 2 cm × 6 cm and 2 cm × 8 cm). The hydrophilic treatment effectively improved the water absorption ratio increasing from 40% to 70%. The weft and warp direction exhibited different electrical behaviors when under dry and wet conditions. It suggested the weft direction of knitted fabrics was recommended for detecting the electrical resistance due to its stable sensitivity and lin-earity performance. It could be used as a flexible sensor integrated into a garment for measuring the skin wetness and sweat rate in the future instead of traditional measurements.
KW - Electrical resistance
KW - Hydrophilicity
KW - Knit
KW - Liquid sweat
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85103835239&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/polym13071015
DO - 10.3390/polym13071015
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85103835239
SN - 2073-4360
VL - 13
JO - Polymers
JF - Polymers
IS - 7
M1 - 1015
ER -